Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Congress Last Night: Passengers on the Titanic

I've taken a day to analyze the State of the Union speech, partly because I watched it with the sound down. Here's what I believe is happening: We're about three-quarters of the way through the realization process that Iraq is a huge mistake. Everything I've heard from both parties seems to indicate a willingness to pretend we can still luck our way through this. It's called postponing the inevitable.

Historians who watch last night's speech and see the assembled faces will say, "They were still in it. Why didn't they see?" It will look like those pictures late in that doomed relationship you had, when you were still trying to make it work. Nancy Pelosi and company will look like passengers on the Titanic. In that sense, I see this stretch of American History as an unbelievable heartbreaker. Somewhere down the line we will call it what it is: an unmitigated disaster and head for the lifeboats. Or at least we should.

If I had one question for the Bush officials, and they were on truth serum, it would be the following: Let's say we knew that Iraq would become a beacon of democracy in the region, a stable presence and not a theocracy, but only if we got out. Would you leave even then?

I don't think they would. My suspicion is we're not there for these lofty goals - we're there for the oil, so all this hand-wringing is nothing but a charade from an administration built on deception. I bet if you looked into Cheney's inner thoughts and posed that question, the answer would be, "Hell no, we're not leaving even if Thomas Jefferson time travels to Iraq and agrees to start their new democracy. We're not there for that, and we're not leaving no matter what." Those bases aren't called permanent for nothing.

So we continue on with the madness, at least until these wretched leaders are gone. The trouble with mistakes like Iraq, is that they're like that messy relationship most of us were in: It always takes way, way too long before we pull the plug.

6 Comments:

I'm hoping the Democrat Congress will cut funding for Iraq and force all of our troops to return home (or other places than Iraq).

Then, once the Islamic fanatics take over - maybe even Iran, and the future safety of the USA becomes a grave concern, then we can probably count on never seeing Democrats control anything for at least 50 years.

Remember Somalia - how Clinton cut and ran - now a country under Islamic Taliban control.

Thanks for your comments, Justadog. You talk about the future safety of the USA becoming a grave concern. You mean we're asking young Americans to die and the safety of the United States isn't a grave concern now? That would mean the Bush administration's claim that our national security was in danger if we didn't go into Iraq, was just a crock. I think getting young Americans killed for a lie is a crime. Do you?

justadog seems to want to have his way at the expense of our troops. 'cut the funding for iraq' certainly results in immediate increase in danger for the troops.if by islamic fanatics justadog means the sunni, shiite, and kurds, they are, after all, the people who live there. if he means the ubiquitous 'terrorists behind every bush', the native populations of iraq have no interest in being ruled by them. the iraqi will handle those fellows.

Just so the rightist fascists understand the civil cause in indicting and imprisoning them for war crimes, and why they each deserve their nazi noose, forcing their face in the truths of their eternal damnation ordained in their broken-brain hero Reagon's foretelling, "facts are stubborn things," here's that:

Invasion of Somalia a boon for big oil, 27 January 1993, By Norm Dixon" ...a significant motive behind the decision of US President George Bush ... to send troops to Somalia may have been protecting the oil industry's multimillion-dollar investments there.... Since the US invasion of Somalia on December 9 little has been said in public about Somalia's potential for oil and natural gas production.